Senate
Republicans, who have been taking heat for fighting an amendment to protect
rape victims, are now lashing out at Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) for even proposing
the measure in the first place.

In October,
Franken introduced an amendment that would deny
funding to defense contractors that "restrict their employees from taking
workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court." Franken
was inspired by the
case of Jamie Leigh Jones, a former employee of KBR (previously a
subsidiary of Halliburton), who "was gang raped by her co-workers" while
stationed in Iraq. When Jones returned to the U.S., KBR tried
to prevent her from taking the case to court.
The measure to punish such practices passed, with 30 out of 40
Republicans voting
against it.

Today, Politico reports that conservative
Senators blame
Franken for the backlash they have faced.
Apparently, Franken isn't doing enough to defend those Republicans who
fought his proposal to protect women like Jones. Moreover, some of them say, the amendment was
really just a "partisan" trap meant to embarrass the Republicans who opposed it:

"I don't know what his motivation was for
taking us on, but I would hope that we won't see a lot of Daily Kos-inspired
amendments in the future coming from him," said South Dakota Sen. John
Thune, No. 4 in the Senate Republican leadership. "I think hopefully he'll
settle down and do kind of the serious work of legislating that's important to Minnesota." [...]

Sen.
Kit Bond (R-Mo.), who also voted against the amendment, said, "from what I know
of" Franken, he "expected" such tactics.
[...]

Thune did not
elaborate on why protecting victims of sexual assault isn't "serious work," nor
did Coburn explain how a measure that garnered support from 10 Republicans -- a
quarter of the caucus -- was "partisan."

For his part,
Franken declined to comment for the article, but a spokesperson rejected the
notion that the Senator was out to get the Republicans. The spokesperson said that Franken has turned
down opportunities "to make a partisan argument about the matter" in the media,
while also noting that he has already introduced four bills with Republican
cosponsors since joining the Senate.

If the
Republicans have a legitimate argument to make, that's fine. But launching baseless attacks on Franken simply
because they're embarrassed is juvenile and cheap, even by their low standards.